Malek Shafi is busy putting up banners advertising Afghanistan’s first human rights film festival. “You see the unusual responsibilities that being the director of a film festival in this country can entail?” he asks ironically. The challenges of organizing an international film festival in war torn Kabul are many, and most of them not quite as visible as the mundane task of mounting banners and posters. 

By our reporter Aunohita Mojumdar.

Security is by far the most evident and pervasive one. The film festival has to be advertised well enough to get an audience, yet avoid being so high-profile that it draws unwanted attention and becomes it a target for attacks. The compromise is to wait until the last minute to announce the venues and timings – something that limits the turnout but makes it possible to hold the event with fewer risks.

Equally challenging is the task of getting film makers to participate in the festival. “Because of the security situation no one is coming,” says Shafi. “

There were directors from Italy, France, Norway and the US, but they all cancelled, I think right after the attack on the British Council.” (The British Council was targeted in August in a wave of spectacular attacks in recent weeks in Kabul.)

Window 

While the security risks are well known, the greater challenge is the growing opposition to creative freedoms. Though after 2001 the removal of the Taliban opened up a window for film makers and other creative artists like painters, musicians and writers, that window seem to be closing again and rapidly, in the face of rising violence, escalating conservatism, growing intolerance as well as the increasing impunity for acts of intolerance.

“After millions of dollars have been spent, it appears the notion of human rights is only on paper,” says Shafi. “

The films will open up the debate on these issues without politicizing it. The films in the festival address issues, but do not mention individuals responsible for the violations of rights,” he says. This safeguard is necessary. Many of the perpetrators are in positions of power.

“This government is not the one we thought we would have after thirty years of war – one which would give us justice. This society is not a normal one – there are new gaps between communities,” Shafi says. The reason for the human rights festival, he adds, was that “90 percent of the films being made by Afghan film makers are about human rights, which is a big challenge for Afghan society.”

Immoral content

In Mazar-e Sharif, the film festival’s parallel screening is shut down due to protests by a section objecting to a film entitled Neighbour, which documents the brutality of Afghan refugee camps in Iran. In recent weeks, Afghan Culture and Information Minister Syed Makhdoom Raheen was berated by the Parliament for allowing “immoral” content on the Afghan airwaves. Many in positions of power would like greater policing of the media as well as the creative arts. The Minister, who is expected to inaugurate the film festival, does not show up.

One of the festival films, We Stars, by a young Afghan actress, Aqeela Rezai, movingly documents the humiliation that she and her co-actresses have to go through to survive in their professions, both from their families and sometimes also the custodians of the law.

Despite the challenges, young Afghans are showing great courage and determination in using these spaces available to them. The same week as the film festival, the city holds a youth festival in which young Afghans gather to show their talent in art, music, design and photography. It includes Afghanistan’s first ‘Pecha Kucha Night’ – the Japanese term for ‘chit-chat’ that has been replicated in many cities around the world.

Opportunities

In a café in central Kabul that caters to the more well-heeled of the city’s residents, Qasem Foushanji is showing us his Gothic art, images that disturb and provoke. He is also a rock musician, participating in the city’s first rock festival this week.

Painting pretty pictures would not do justice to his perception of reality, says Foushanji: "My job is to kick up dust and throw it in your eyes to make you see the dark realities you are ignoring."

"We have a little bit of freedom for media, for artists, for film makers if we can keep it,” says Diana Saqeb, a young film maker who is the programme director of the film festival. “It is a golden opportunity we can use. We can show Jafar Panahi, who could not show the film in his own country.”

The festival opened with Accordion, a film by this Iranian film-maker. His work is banned in Iran and he was recently sentenced to six years in prison.

For Malek Shafi, the impetus is simple. “I was in the Netherlands, in The Hague, when the Taliban fell. I thought it was a shame for me if I didn’t return to my country when 30 other countries were there to rebuild it. I have to continue now on my chosen path. I don’t have any other profession. I have to make movies. I don’t have any other choice.”